Blindsided by PATTON

Like the uniforms and artillery we see its characters employ, to the type of warfare we watch them wage. Much of PATTON belongs in The Smithsonian for one to look at for a minute or two with reverence, and then move on. That’s not to say that the film is in any way irrelevant – just that in many of the best ways, it’s evidence of a bygone age…and how that era regarded the age before it.

PATTON is the bio-pic of General George S. Patton (George C. Scott). Patton was one of the finest American generals of the 20th Century. He led American forces during WWII first in African and Italian campaigns, before heading up a relentless European attack that would be instrumental in the defeat of the nazis in continental Europe. Along the way he would lose his commission for slapping an enlisted man who was claiming battle fatigue (what we now call ‘post traumatic stress disorder’), and couldn’t keep his foot out of his mouth when a microphone was on him.

The film is an epic. It drops us into battle after battle, portrays a master strategist and a leader who understands modern warfare. It sprawls 171 minutes (including an intermission) and won Best Picture in 1970.It’s been said that seldom have actor and part intertwined as well as when Scott took on the role of Patton. It’s difficult for me to say whether this is true, given the fact that I’m not well-versed enough in either the legacy of Patton or Scott to tell. I will say this: PATTON’s construction lives and dies with the part. There are scant scenes where the general is not the centre of the action, so whoever dared to take on the part had to know that he’d have a lot of heavy lifting to do.

To this end, Scott is legendary. Like many of the greatest roles in film history, he commands every second he’s on scene and leaves the audience in awe.

The funny thing is that much of the way Patton is written – and likewise the way Scott plays him – borders on caricature. Were someone like Nick Nolte to play the part this way in a 2012 release, a modern audience might dismiss the acting as hammy. But something in Scott’s persona holds it all together even all these years later. We forget for nearly three whole hours that we are watching an actor, and fully believe that we are in the presence of an American icon.

Much of it is embodied in that indelible opening speech. We are in the presence of a player and a part that will be brash, confident, intimidating, and direct. He will tell you that he knows what is going through your head, and that you aren’t the first person to think these thoughts. You listen to him and stare at a gigantic flag…as though a force as mighty as America itself was telling you what you are signing up for.

Despite the film’s efforts to show Patton as a flawed warrior, it seldom fails to lionize him. Even in his down moments – his moments where he realizes he isn’t political enough to get what he wants most, or his moments where he realizes what his abrasiveness has cost him – he always comes across as a great king who was wounded in battle. This course of storytelling leaves me curious towards just what it was the movie wanted to do.

The film arrived in the final few years of the Vietnam War, at a time where America didn’t fully believe in what their country was fighting for. Was PATTON supposed to rally them? Remind them of what one of their greatest military leaders was able to accomplish where many felt he’d fail? If so, then why portray the general so flawed? Was the film perhaps trying to echo America’s dissent of the military powers and their decision-making? From what I understand, that theory doesn’t work either since publicly Patton was never as thick-headed as he is portrayed in this film.

Perhaps the best description of PATTON, is that it was the bridge between the old tales of wartime heroism, and the new era of disillusionment that was to come. It unrolls scene after scene of majestic bombardment, wanting to dwarf the audience like so many epics that came before it. Yet it has no interest in holding up one of America’s greatest military leaders to be a modern-day Spartacus…showing him in some ways as his own worst enemy. It’s as if the film wants to say that we can’t see warriors in the same light that we used to – but doesn’t have the guts to fully come out and say that.

Where PATTON is at its ballsiest, is when it underlines the changing attitude towards battle fatigue (ptsd). Patton himself was a WWI vet, and would have been well-versed in the effects of shell shock (the original name of ptsd). Yet the moment he sets first in the hospital of his North African base, he instructs the company doctor not to treat any soldier claiming battle fatigue. He – and many of his ilk at the time – believed it to be the coward’s way out of engagement.

The film clearly doesn’t believe so, and makes a point not to gloss over Patton’s beating and threat of death to a soldier who claims battle fatigue later on. Were the film looking to deify the general, it would have skimmed past it and moved on to his tactical prowess. But this film not only wants to show him as cracked, but wants to underline the real horrors soldiers have to carry with them. Not everyone believed in it at the time, but it would become undeniable as soldiers returned home from Vietnam in the years to come.

PATTON is an artifact of another time. It marks an era where a leader of Patton’s stature would be on the battlefield getting mud on his boots, and not safely back at a command centre calling orders across a wire. It was the beginning of filmmakers wanting to tell truths about war that audiences might not want to hear, and gave us the nudge down the rabbit hole that we would never climb out of.

It would be told very differently if a modern director were to tell the tale, but the way it encapsulates that turning point in our collective awareness is a big piece of what makes it such a fascinating watch.

I intend to post my entries on the final Tuesday of every month. If you are participating, drop me an email (ryanatthematineedotca) when your post is up and I’ll make sure to link to your entry.

18 comments

Ryan, great job with this review. Patton is on my list and didn’t make the blind spots series this year, but I have a feeling it might show up if I continue it in 2013. It sounds like Scott’s performance is something to see. Thanks for adding the link to my post!

There’s a lot to love in this film, including a very under-appreciated Karl Malden as Omar Bradley. That opening speech cures a lot of ills, too. After that, I’m willing to give this film some space and forgive it a few faults.

You’ve probably been participating the whole year without specifically making a point of it. It was all just designed to be a way to drag a dozen films kicking and screaming off the ‘to-see’ list, and finally pull them out of one’s blind spot.

So aim to have a post like that ready for September 25th, and I’ll include it in the links.

APOCALYPSE NOW would actually make a very good candidate for that – but do not go straight to The Redux. Begin with the original cut.

Can’t agree with you here. Yes, it’s an artifact of the 20th Century Fox regime (post Darryl Zanuck, who spent a lot of time in North Africa during the war). Patton, though, was a new deal. War films were becoming less jingoistic–and where Patton is so, is in the character’s enjoyment of battle. Vietnam had a lot to do with that. You couldn’t make a straight-faced advocacy piece ala The Green Berets anymore. And the script (by studio stalwart Edmund North, who wrote The Day The Earth Stood Still, and a re-write by Francis Ford Coppola–he didn’t know it was being made until he went over to 20th to show off some German editing machines he’d bought) walks a fine line as a character piece between being the general’s advocate and showing him warts and all. In that, Scott is Patton’s biggest asset. Even if the film is critical of him (and they could have been a LOT more critical), Scott’s dignity in the performance always puts him in the right. Scott made sure of it. He re-wrote lines—the “God help me, I love it so”—and undercut others (Patton’s lying down while coercing Beedle to mount an attack that didn’t seem feasible—Scott’s compromise for a scene he wanted cut). I’m surprised you didn’t mention the long-lens/wide-screen direction by Franklin Schaffner, that has some of the most stylized war-footage ever.

You’re right to point out that it was a step in a new direction, and that the unshaking ‘rah-rah’ of THE GREEN BERETS was already a storytelling relic. I think though, the reason why it feels like something of an artifact to me is that it feels like we’ve taken another step forward since then. This sort of grand disillusionment gave way to something more philosophical like THE THIN RED LINE, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, or even THE HURT LOCKER.

Everything you bring up is what keeps it such a splendid film (and to be clear – I enjoyed the heck out of it). This one took my brain back a generation or two.

Correction – “I Am a Precious Late-Falling Snowflake”. Get it right will ya?

Thanks for the link…B-)

I haven’t seen PATTON in years, but I remember getting something totally unexpected. Given its reputation and assumptions of being a standard war film, it threw me. Not in a bad way, but just sideways.

The late-falling ones aren’t as precious. Keep that in mind for next month.

It’s funny how a film can build up a reputation and still end up throwing us for a loop isn’t it? I’m used that with new films, where every once in a while you get a case of mis-marketing, but when one sits down for a classic, there’s a certain mindset of “Let’s do this”

I did an MTESS on this one awhile back, Ryan. (In case you get curious. http://fogsmoviereviews.com/2012/05/27/movies-that-everyone-should-see-patton/ LOL) Methinks you assign to much significance to the coincidence of its release date and the tone of the film. From my understanding, the only influence Nam had on the movie was to play up the reincarnation/poetry angle of the character. Fox brass wanted to play up his eccentricities a bit in order to play to the hippies as best they could (which wouldnt be much).

Aside from that, McCarthy and Zanuck wanted to make a straight up biopic… They lionized him because they genuinely liked the man, and his deeds were noteworthy. The critical scenes were there because they were the truth.

It is rumored though that the movie impacted the times though. I’ve heard that this was Nixon’s favorite film, and Oliver Stone believes that his blood was boiled by it… thus contributing to the boming in Cambodia and Laos.

Fair point about the context of the film’s undertones – all I can say is that sometimes that’s the sort of thing we should think about when watching classic films…not just “this is supposed to be a classic?” (Not that *you* think such things.

I realize that the team involved might not have expressly been thinking about whether they wanted the film to be…but it’s clear to see that they’d reached a stage where painting a man like Patton as either a hero or a flawed leader was less straightforward than it would have been even a generation prior.

That’s fascinating info about Nixon man…though I worry somewhat at a nation’s leader being influenced by a movie.

I looooove this movie. Easily one of my all time favorite. There’s just something about Scott in this film that oozes perfection throughout every scene. Like you, I don’t know how honest an interpretation of Patton his performance is, but I can’t imagine screenwriters Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North getting a more accurate interpretation of their screenplay. I keep meaning to read the book on which this is based but can never seem to find the time (that and the pile of books I can’t find the time to read that I own is a staggering number, already).

I’m not sure how important honesty is in the case of Patton, just clarity of vision. Unless the screenwriter was there on the battlefield, then we’ll never get actual honesty. Even then, their own bias is going to come through, right?

Like you though, I *am* quite interested in reading more about Patton. Here’s hoping I can grab a bio sometime soon.